


love me like you (guys) do

by seventies



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, F/M, OT3, i love these three so here u go, jughead and cheryl are leaders of the Must Protect Betty Cooper Squad 2k18(TM), just archie, or u know, p-p-pls go easy on me sOBS GROSSLY, the entire riverdale are members
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-03-06 11:29:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13410309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventies/pseuds/seventies
Summary: Jughead Jones and Cheryl Blossom are partners in biology. They do not talk about biology.





	love me like you (guys) do

"See these nails?" Cheryl sneered, flashing her faux diamond-studded manicure to his face. "These have been sufficiently sharpened to ensure you do  _not_  touch me, Gerard Way." 

"I'll take that as an honor, actually," Jughead snorted, shoving her hands away from his face while Cheryl recoiled them in horror, as if he had struck her with his laptop - not that he would. It was too precious to be wasted on the likes of Cheryl. "The part where you addressed me as Gerard Way, of course." 

" _Ugh._  Even your taste in music is absolute garbage!" Cheryl cried, whilst eyeing Jughead's standard ragged clothes. "Where'd you scavenged that, you peasant? Under the heaps of leftover cement in Andrews Construction?" 

"No," Jughead rebutted, eyes scanning the branded tag on Cheryl's dress. "It's from a shittier place called  _Dolce and Gabbana_." 

Cheryl shrieked as she quickly fixed her dress to prevent it from showing the insides of its fabric. "You disgusting pervert! Don't you dare - " 

Jughead groaned, "Oh please! I'd rather - " 

"You two have been at it for two hours now," Pop said, suddenly standing by their table with his arms crossed and a grim look on his face. "If this continues on, I'm gonna have to kick you two out. You're scaring away all my customers." 

At the same time, both Judgead and Cheryl came up to their defenses: "But Pop!  _I'm_  your number one customer!" / "You can't do that! I'm  _Cheryl Blossom!_ " 

But Cheryl wasn't done. She turned from Pop to Jughead, fixing him with a condescending look. Jughead almost wished he had Cheryl's heels so he could stab her and the look in her eyes with them. "Besides, I would rather cut off my luscious locks than invite scum like him into my wonderful house. I'm afraid the Blossom Manor does not simply accept... stray dogs into our abode." 

"I'd say the same to you," Jughead growled. 

"Oh? I never knew that the Drive-In Theater accounted as a stable house." 

"It's a  _home_ , not a house. I wouldn't expect you and your fellow Blossoms to know the difference." He spat at her. 

Cheryl flushed in anger, raising from her seat and slamming her hands against the table, making her now-cold strawberry milkshake to almost fall on their unopened Biology notes. "You little - "

Pop suddenly threw his hands to gesture wildly at the door - where a customer who suspiciously looked like Moose entered rather cheerfully only minutes ago, only to turn his back again and leave once he took in the dark aura surrounding a certain redhead and beanie-clad boy. 

"You - Ugh. Never mind. The faster you two start doing whatever it is you're supposed to be doing, the faster you two would leave." Pop said dejectedly, muttering under his breath as he walked away. 

Cheryl and Jughead never lost eye contact. "He's got a point," Jughead said slowly, and Cheryl sat again with a huff, straightening the hem of her skirt. 

"Let's get on with it then," came Cheryl's sickly sweet voice. 

Jughead opened his binder to scan his notes in Biology, skimming over the project titles that their teacher gave them that day. Imagine his  _immense pleasure_  (cough) when he had been paired up with none other than Cheryl Blossom with a project that would accost them 20% of their final grade for the semester. 

 _The sooner the better,_  he thought silently. "Cell theory, evolution, genetics, energy - what do you want our paper to be based on?" 

He waited for an answer, eyes still trained on the doodle he made earlier in class on the margins of his notes; when none came, he raised his head, only to find Cheryl tapping fast on her phone. 

He checked the table. 

"You don't even have  _notes?_ " Jughead groused, wanting so badly to tear out his hair in frustration; but that would mean taking off his beanie, and that wasn't something he was willing to do under the presence of Cheryl. 

"I don't need it," Cheryl snapped, flipping her hair. And Jughead almost forgets that Cheryl has withstand high school with a GPA of 4.0 throughout her years as a Vixen  _and_  a trivial queen-bitch. Talk about someone with too much time in their hands. 

At the very least, he was paired with someone smart. And yet Jughead couldn't help but envision someone else in her stead: someone with lighter hair, fairer skin, brighter eyes - 

"I wish Betty was here," he said aloud. Accidentally. 

He jostled in his seat, berating himself for his habit of saying his thoughts aloud whenever he was in deep pondering. 

He risked a glance at Cheryl, expecting her to be furious or scornful because of his "disrespect" to her presence or whatever, but what he saw caught him completely off guard. 

She had this... odd look to her face. Cheryl had her chin leaning lightly on her wrist, eyes drooped low, not enough to hide the unfamiliar emotion swirling within its depths; her mouth was quirking up, as if it was an unconscious reflex to hearing... Her name. 

Jughead couldn't help but gape. 

"I suppose," Cheryl murmured, suddenly soft, "her intelligence quotient is quite remarkable. Last time, aside from moi, of course, she made this qualitative research on the comparison studies between Camus and Beckett. Quite the dark side she has, little sister Cooper." 

For some reason, Jughead has forgotten he hates Cheryl at the mention of Betty's lit paper. 

"I read that," he commented, nodding his head, "it was amazing. I'd never thought to bring up the roots of Becket's play against the novels of Camus - it just never made that connection until Betty made it. She gets an A+ there, doesn't she?" 

"Obviously," Cheryl rolled her eyes, soft still. 

"She wrote a paper for the Watchtower too," Jughead added, almost too eager in his gushing of Betty's achievements. "About the rumor of Heather McClain using foods over expiration in the cafeteria  to use the east school's budgeting for the scouts. Had a thing for Dilton Doiley, apparently." 

If it were the normal Cheryl, she would've jumped at the chance to belittle someone - McClain or Doiley or both. But she straightens up and absorbs what Jughead has shared about Betty, as if she were saving it with her ears and filing it away in a secret corner of her brain where only cute blondes with shy depositions were allowed to enter.

"That  _Nancy Drew_  wannabe," Cheryl rolled her eyes, but there was a fondness there, and a smile on her lips, and Jughead couldn't help but agree, nodding along. 

"Her footwork has improved too," Cheryl coughed, "not as good as mine, but - " then there's a dark  _something_  passing over her eyes, "her hip movements, body sways, have gone... significantly better." 

Jughead recognized that look, because no doubt he's wearing it himself at the image of a sweaty and flushed Betty: hips grinding low against the dance floor, back arched into poise, her normally-perfect ponytail in an uncharacteristic mess as she continued to move  and shake her body to the music... 

"Being a Vixen has done her good, huh?" Jughead gulped, voice low and sighing and  _whipped._

"Of course," Cheryl smirked, "I  _did_  her good." 

Suddenly Jughead has an epiphany, because he jumps from his chair and almost hits his vanilla milkshake. 

"You - " He struggled for words, blinking fast. "You did that on purpose!" 

"Whatever do you mean?" 

"Betty's choreography," he bit out, almost a helpless groan at the memory flashing through his head: wet locks plastered across her face and a lovely red pooling on her cheeks, over her ears, under her neck - 

Cheryl didn't even bother to hide her smile, eyes flitting over into slits, indubitably seeing the same thing Jughead has been seeing in his mind. "I only want the best for my Vixens, after all. But who's to say that even the Captain herself can't enjoy her own show?" 

Jughead bit his lip, thinking about how he could never have the chance to converse like this with Archie, who would sock him in the jaw if he knew, or Veronica, who would strangle him with her father's pearls - and breathed a slow, steady rhythm as he regarded the redhead before him with utmost seriousness. 

"Do you think even her underwear is pastel-colored?" 

Cheryl's eyes  _glimmered._  

* * *

 

Moose had attempted to enter the Pop's shop again about an hour later, only to do a double-take and run for his life. Pop could only sigh against the counter as he eyed the two teens together in his booth, alone in his little resto. "If I thought them fighting was scary," Pop mumbled to himself, watching behind glass doors as Archie fainted at the sight and Kevin had to restrain his own eyeballs from popping out, "then them getting along is absolutely  _terrifying._ " 


End file.
